


It's Complicated

by TheHomestuckWhovian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Conspiracy, Corruption, Gen, Human Experimentation, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Unethical Experimentation, Vigilantism, there's a lot more tags later, this story is just gonna be really fucking slow guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-06-30 11:30:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHomestuckWhovian/pseuds/TheHomestuckWhovian
Summary: One little trip outside the Garrison, just to clear his head after a bad day. One little break to keep himself from going crazy in his lonely dorm room. One little chance to have a breather before going back in and continuing life as normal.One little breather was enough time for his entire world to turn upside down, and for him to be dragged into a conspiracy that encompassed all of the city of Warden.Fuck.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this monster of a story was supposed to be for the Voltron Supernova Big Bang, but due to some issues, I had to drop. I still want to continue this story though, so I'm going to start posting it here.
> 
> Chapter One was beta-ed by [blipspan](https://blipspan.tumblr.com), who I would like to apologize for me being probably the worst writer to get paired with, heh. The other chapters have been edited by me, so expect them to be of a lower quality than the first since I am shit at editing.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy!

_In...two...three...four_

Lance was peering through the scope, focusing on his target in the distant desert. Keeping his breathing even, he silently waited for the precise moment at which he would have an opening, then...there.

The target had stopped, holding up their weapon to strike, and Lance saw his chance, smirking.

He fired, hitting the target directly in the head. They collapsed to the ground, weapon falling beside them. Lance grinned, proud of his successful hit, when a very familiar voice cut in, immediately ruining his mood.

“Lance! You nearly hit me!”

_In...two...three...four. Hold...two...three...four. Out...two...three...four. It’s not about you; it’s about supporting your team through this. Don’t lose your cool. You don’t have many chances left. Stay calm._

“No, Carter. I didn’t. I haven’t hit anything but my target in every other situation, and I probably never will.” Unless his teammate kept talking. “Now, I’m going to head out. Wes, you did clear the west side, right? I need to go through there to set up and provide support for you guys entering the base.” There was no response. “Wes?” Still no answer.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Lance,” Carter interrupted, sounding irritated. “Now move your ass!”

Lance groaned and picked up the rifle and his other equipment, hauling ass towards his next place.

Okay, so maybe Lance was a bit annoyed and bitter at Carter and Wes, but whatever. No one was more of an expert at putting aside bullshit to work with someone than him...okay so maybe there were a lot of people better at that than he was, but whatever. He just needed to get in position and cover Carter and Wes’ asses, and maybe then they’d stop being dumb for about five minutes and listen to him.

He was already approximately twenty yards from his previous position when he heard a very familiar voice over his earpiece.

“Hey Carter, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Wes. Did you cut him out of the signal?”

Those motherfuckers.

“Yeah. Iverson clearly didn’t think it through, saddling us with the deadbeat. I’ll be there in a few seconds.”

Carter snorted, noting, “Yeah, what a loser. If he wanted the west area cleared so much, why didn’t he do it himself?”

Lance’s eyes narrowed.

Wes must have cut off his mic’s connection, but been too dumb to cut off his earpiece. A rookie mistake for someone trying to go over their teammate’s head. Pidge wouldn’t have fucked up in such an obvious way, and neither would have Hunk.

Based on the asshat’s comments, the west area was probably not clear, meaning Lance had no safe way to get into position. He’d either have to struggle through the west area and hope for the best, or find an alternate vantage point and quickly, since Carter and Wes were heading directly into the enemy base without anyone covering their asses.

Carter and Wes had fucking set them all up for failure because they thought they could just leave Lance hanging. Petty motherfuckers.

Lance pulled up his holographic map of the terrain. There was an alternate vantage point, not nearly as good as the one he had chosen before, but it would work. The area had already been partially handled by Carter while Lance provided support fire (meaning he could confirm that there had been some actual work done there), so it wasn’t as risky as the west area, which could be absolutely crawling with hostiles for all he knew. He’d have to haul ass to get there though, since Carter and Wes were probably already part of the way to the base and Lance, having to change positions last minutes, was slowed down, and there were still some hostiles that he might run into.

He didn’t even have a way to communicate to them to hold back, so he just had to move quickly and hope Carter and Wes didn’t get too fucked up before he got there.

Their fault for cutting him out.

He attached his sniper rifle to the magnetic clips on the back of his suit and pulled his pistols from his side holsters, heading for the vantage point as best he could. He was occasionally forced to duck behind rocks as hostiles passed by, doing his best to hold his breath so there would be no sound coming from him.

The scenery was very bland, to say the least. It was a wide desert with some rock protruding from the ground, which Lance was grateful for, since it provided cover. There was a lot of climbing on his part, since he had to be up and out of the way to provide cover for his teammates, who were more close combat oriented. In the distance, he could see the base, a plain, gray building that looked out of place in the beige and orange of the desert and surrounding rock formations. He could also just barely spot Carter and Wes, if only because their camouflage was completely useless when they were just casually strolling up to the base as if they were models on a fucking runway instead of two operatives on a mission.

He needed to hurry the fuck up or they would get absolutely slaughtered.

Lance was about halfway there when a hostile began firing on him, and he ducked behind a rock, carefully peeking out before firing one of his pistols at their head, causing them to fall. Two more came at the sound of laser gun fire and Lance quickly shot those two.

“I just heard laser guns.”

“Probably Lance making a fool out of himself.”

He scowled, looking from behind his cover for a good long moment to ensure that there were no more hostiles when he felt the end of a laser gun jabbed into his back. He looked back to see a hostile behind him.

Fuck.

“ _Lance McClain-Sanchez is out_ ,” a robotic female voice said over his earpiece.

“Good riddance,” Wes noted over her earpiece, and Lance scowled as he was escorted out of the simulator by the defense bot, brought into a familiar room with familiar screens to watch the rest of the mission from the outside.

There were Carter and Wes on the screen, both at the front of the base, and Lance saw the sniper just before Wes was shot by them.

“ _Erica Weston is out._ ”

“Fuck, a sniper!” Carter shouted, ducking for cover. “I can’t safely get to the entrance!”

Wow, sure would have been useful to have your own sniper there to get the enemy sniper and clear your entry. But no, you had to fuck him over. Spectacular strategy. A+. 10/10. Smartest decision making of the year. Do you want a fucking prize for such incredible teamwork and decision making, you absolute piece of shit?

Wes scowled at Lance when she was escorted into the viewing room with him, muttering a variety of angry insults as if it was Lance’s fault she had been shot and not her brilliant idea to basically cut him out of the team, not do the one thing she had agreed to do so he could actually do his fucking job, and force him to go into an area with active hostiles in order to try and recover from the setbacks _she had caused_ , as well as insure that Lance couldn’t communicate that he had to change his plan at the last fucking minute and that they needed to fall back and wait for him to actually be able to help them.

Also, they didn’t even consider trying to regroup from the loss of him and come up with a better plan, since they just lost their back-up and cover fire.

Yeah, Lance was a little pissed, because he sure damn well knew when he wasn’t wanted, but this fucker didn’t even try to act like maybe losing him would have so many damn fucking repercussions.

Moments later, the robotic voice said, “ _James Carter is out._ ”

They had failed the simulator. Again.

Lance hated this fucking team.

* * *

Iverson looked motherfucking pissed. Lance didn’t blame him, though he wished the man would, for once, realize that sometimes the blame couldn’t equally go onto all parties.

His rant, which Lance had tuned out of because he had heard this a thousand times before in better circumstances, was interrupted by Wes speaking up.

“General Iverson, if I may?” she asked, and Iverson scowled but gestured for her to go ahead. Wes pulled up the holographic map, gesturing to the west side of it and explaining, “McClain-Sanchez was supposed to go to this section, which I had cleared before heading to the base, but according to our footage, he went rogue and headed towards this area instead, essentially going against our original plan and committing suicide. He also failed to inform us that he was changing the plan, making us unable to recover from _his_ mistake.”

Lance hated her so much. Because he knew for a fact that Iverson wouldn’t take him seriously at all. So, he simply scowled and let her continue being an asshole.

“Carter and I have both been talking and we agreed that it would probably be best if McClain-Sanchez was removed from our team, since it was his faulty reasoning and failure to communicate today that caused our failure.”

Iverson’s eyes narrowed, and Lance barely let himself hope that he would call them out, but instead he pinched his brow and said, “Alright. Weston, Carter, I’ll talk to you two later. Your new teammate will be assigned by this weekend. Dismissed.”

The two grinned at each other as if they hadn’t just completely fucked over Lance, Carter waving with a smirk on his whiny bitch face as they left, leaving Lance alone to deal with the wrath of General Iverson. God, he hated them.

“This has been the third time this month you have failed to work with a team, McClain! You have proven entirely incapable of working with any team at all!”

Lance’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “I mean this with no disrespect, General Iverson, but I did work well with one team.”

“Kalani and Gunderson are gone, McClain!” Iverson shouted.

“Is anyone even searching for them?” Lance asked, glaring. “Has anyone even bothered to try and find out what happened to two minors who just disappeared from this campus out of the blue one night? How are you explaining to their parents why no one is looking for them?”

“That is none of your concern, McClain, now shut up or I will have you escorted off the premises!”

Lance bit his tongue to keep from firing back a retort.

“Now, you have one more chance, McClain,” Iverson informed him. “You will be assigned to another team and begin working with them after spring break. If you fail to cooperate with them, you’ll be expelled. The top student in your class was removed for being unable to cooperate. Don’t let it happen to you.”

He wanted to shout, to insist that he couldn’t go home even if the Garrison kicked him out, because his parents couldn’t afford the airfare home. He wanted to keep fighting him on trying to find his old team. He wanted to say anything at all, do something other than just let this guy continue to walk over him.

Instead, he looked at the floor and answered bitterly, “Yes sir.”

* * *

Lance didn’t mean to brag (well actually, yes he did), but he was very good at sneaking out.

Hunk hadn’t believed him at first, and woke up one morning to find Lance sitting at his desk, sipping away at a lukewarm Starbucks cappuccino with a cocky smirk on his face. Even Pidge had to concede that Lance was, surprisingly, good at getting past Garrison security.

It was a necessary talent, in Lance’s opinion. He got stir-crazy from staying in the Garrison for too long, and with his family off in Cuba and thus no excuse to leave for a short break, he was forced to figure out how to get out and back into the Garrison without ever being noticed. It gave him a chance to unwind, flirt with girls that hadn’t seen him fuck up in class, eat decent-tasting food, etcetera. All of that was available in the city of Warden, Nevada, so Lance had been sneaking out since his first year at the Garrison.

What was not to love about the Garrison? Shitty food, awful military-style teachers, terrible motivational tactics, and the inability to prioritize the right things. Only the best school for young superhumans out there. Why would any young superhuman ever want to leave, even for just a moment?

To be fair though, Lance did know someone desperate enough to fake all their information to get in, but not exactly for the learning environment.

The Garrison was honestly a shitty place, run by terrible teachers, who set up a system where everything was unbalanced. Lance didn’t doubt that pretty much every student at that school was hiding something from the faculty. Extra powers, habits, their real reasons for attending in the first place. As much as he, Hunk, and Pidge were ostracized for being too weird, too zany, too undisciplined, too _different_ (which was pretty rich in a school where the guy two doors down the hall could shapeshift into a giant duck), the three of them fit right into the secretive environment.

It was a private school, sponsored by many different companies. In a school like this, if you didn’t have a shit ton of money, you either got a scholarship because of hard work and meeting the requirements, or you were enrolled because you simply couldn't control your powers and needed the training the Garrison offered. Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were all scholarship students, fitting into the first of the two categories. The three had worked their butts off to make the grades and reach the physical requirements to be a student (though Pidge’s way of doing things did have a safety net). They had all been at the bottom of the class during their first few training sessions, but as time went on they slowly improved as a team, becoming closer friends as they did. They shared a few of their secrets, lamented the awfulness of the Garrison together, talked about their families. Hunk and Pidge had made the Garrison bearable for Lance, and then one day two months ago, while he was in bed with the flu, they vanished from campus.

Lance hadn’t seen or heard from them since, and absolutely no one was actually trying to look for them. There weren’t even bullshit excuses. They just were gone, and no one even fucking tried to find them, to make sure they were safe.

There wasn’t a day that went by where Lance didn’t regret spending so much of his time trying to get into this hell hole, but tough luck for him, because now he was stuck. They would only pay airfare for summer vacations or for graduating students who chose not to stay nearby or work there. No Christmas or Spring break with his family. And if he was expelled, they wouldn’t even pay for him to get back home. Cheap motherfuckers wouldn’t give a damn about stranding a seventeen-year-old boy in Nevada, just like they didn’t give a damn when Hunk and Pidge just vanished without a trace one night. He couldn’t afford to get expelled.

So, like a truly brilliant individual, he snuck out the same night he was threatened with being expelled.

In his defense, he couldn’t exactly stay in his room alone, with only his thoughts and the memory of how Hunk used to sit on the bottom bunk, experimenting with some junk electronics to make something new, yet still manage to listen as Lance ranted on about something dumb. His room felt empty with Hunk’s stuff cleared out, the only remaining items having been shoved under Lance’s bed along with what he had salvaged from Pidge’s room, which was mostly very important stuff Pidge wouldn’t have wanted the Garrison getting their hands on. He just wanted to forget about everything that had happened, and the best possible way to do that would be to get out of the Garrison and go into the city, distract himself with something dumb, then come back when he was tired.

So, there he was, walking through the city with his backpack slung over his shoulder, filled with essentials, just in case.

He was considering what he was going to do when he heard a high-pitched shrieking that pierced his eardrums. The surrounding people cowered down on the ground, and he quickly shoved his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to block out the sound. He spared a glance up and watched the scene in front of him in amazement.

In front of the building before him was a fight going on, with three suited people.

There was a red-suited one, slashing with a sword and slicing through the defense bots, outmaneuvering them like it was easy. They were aggressive, exceptionally fast, and they decimated large amounts of bots like they were nothing. Lance would have been more impressed if he hadn’t been concerned about what the fuck was going on.

There was a yellow-suited one, who was throwing out devices that did everything from produce the horrible sound that Lance had just heard to creating traps and providing shielding and cover fire for the other two combatants. There was more armor on them, Lance vaguely noted, meaning they were quite suited to be a tank, but their weapon and items placed them as more of a support. They actually appeared to be switching between the two roles, oddly enough, drawing fire onto themself occasionally but otherwise sticking to their support role. Pidge would be very interested in seeing this.

And then there was the black-suited one, their hand glowing with bright purple light and slicing through the bots as easily as the sword had done. Lance could see the incredible skill that they used, easily dodging and attacking, flowing almost as if they were water through the battlefield. None of the rare hits that got them seemed to faze them for even a moment.

All three of them worked well together, the red and black ones showing exceptional close combat experience and the yellow one providing support impressively. It was both awe-inspiring and fucking terrifying.

Lance knew about them. There wasn’t one person in this city who didn’t.

They had been attacking a variety of businesses around the city, though they never harmed a civilian. Their aggression was always limited to the defense bots. Lance had received concerned messages from his family, warning him to be careful in Warden. Despite the warnings, he never actually considered he’d see them. Warden was a big city after all.

There were others. Lance knew that too. But today it was just these three, fighting impressively. He felt almost frozen in place at the sight, both wanting to see it to the end and run as far away as he possibly could. He ended up settling on watching with his jaw dropped as all the bots were handled.

All three of them stopped, seeming to hear something, and raced off in different directions. The big yellow one disappeared first, followed by the one in black. The one in red just ran.

Lance blinked, then raced to an alley, throwing open his backpack and pulling off his shoes. Whoever they were, Lance knew the best way to help the authorities was to follow them. And who better to follow than the red one, who had yet to lose the police chasing them.

He finished and pulled the hood of his white hoodie up, just so no one would happen to see him and recognize him on a glance. He pushed himself onto his feet, cracked his knuckles with a smirk, and immediately focused on forming his path.

Lance had his own secrets he kept from the Garrison. They just believed he was a minor super, only enhanced physical attributes and that was it. He hadn’t shared for a good reason; it was a power he preferred to keep to himself, not turned into a weapon or a tool. So, he kept quiet about it.

Having formed the beginning of the icy path, Lance grinned and started skating.

It was a bit difficult, dividing his attention between creating a path for himself and locating Red, but once he had done the latter and began his pursuit, he could focus more on maintaining his speed and keeping up with Red.

It was difficult as fuck, since Red was fucking fast, but Lance had been ice-skating for a long time and was much faster on skates than he was on feet, so he managed to keep Red in his sights as they raced out of town into the desert. Lance hung back a bit once the sounds of the city became distant, knowing that if Red heard him, he was fucked.

Lance noticed Red stop and immediately slowed down, skating behind a rock formation and doing his best to control his breathing despite how fucking hard it was to keep up and how tired he was.

They had stopped near some weird shack, which looked as though someone had abandoned it decades ago. Lance could barely see Warden at this distance. Unlike the simulated desert earlier, this place was warm and dry, and there was a breeze that would have been pleasant if Lance hadn’t been wearing a hoodie. He could clearly see the wide expanse of stars here, where they had been washed out by the lights of the city in Warden. This would be a nice place for a camping trip when he wasn’t chasing a fugitive, though the shack itself was an eyesore.

He wondered vaguely if this is where Red lived, and for a moment felt sympathy for them, then scowled at himself. Right, well-known and potentially dangerous fugitive here, not some poor person squatting in a shack. Hard to feel sympathy for someone who was possibly violent and might not hesitate to kill Lance if they spotted him.

He peeked over the rock, remaining as still as possible as Red looked around themself, making sure there was no one nearby. They looked at the rock formation for a moment, and Lance quickly moved back behind it, holding his breath in panic. He waited several seconds before peeking again, seeing their gaze pointed to the shack.

The armored person seemed to slump a little, looking relieved that no one had followed them, before removing their helmet.

Lance barely avoided gasping. He quickly ducked behind the rock feature in case they had heard his surprise, pressing his hand over his mouth to keep himself from making any sound to indicate that he was there. He blinked, half-certain he had hallucinated the whole thing, before silently taking another peek to confirm what he had just seen.

There, in red armor with a sword on his belt, looking as dead tired and winded as Lance did in that moment, was fucking Keith.

* * *

Lance was in practically a daze the entire time he spent sneaking back into the Garrison, his mind racing as he struggled to comprehend what the fuck he had just witnessed. He was nearly caught about four times and almost set off an alarm twice, because he was still reeling from the absolute shock that was the discovery. Even when he finally got back to his room, he simply flopped on his bed and just...blinked. Because of all the things that would happen in his life, finding out Keith dressed in weird armor and sliced through a bunch of defense robots after getting kicked out was not one that had mentally occurred to him.

Jesus Christ, his life was so fucking weird and disturbing and wrong at this point.

Keith was the former Garrison Golden Boy. Lance knew that. Oh boy, did he know that. There wasn’t a goddamn day that went by where some dipshit or another wouldn’t remind Lance that he’d never be as good as fucking Emo Mullet McDropout. People would laugh at Lance’s irrational hatred, but it wasn’t so irrational when you had spent so much time and effort just to barely get in while this guy literally had to exist and already he was perfect. It wasn’t irrational when the guy didn’t even go to the fucking Garrison anymore and he still was being used as a standard Lance could never reach. It wasn’t irrational when your entire worth at that fucking school was determined by how close you got to him in skill level and Lance just _couldn’t fucking get there._

So yes, Lance knew very well who Keith was. He also knew that any attempt to reveal Keith’s identity would go about as well as crawling into a pit of venomous snakes and hoping for the best. Because pretty much everyone knew that Lance vehemently hated Keith, and would immediately accuse him of lying because of pettiness. And sure, Lance could admit that he was petty at times, when the situation was small and not really a big deal. But this was a lot more serious than maybe anonymously accusing Keith of bringing a cat into school (though to be fair he heard meowing in Keith’s room for a week about a month later, which made that less petty and more a sign that maybe he was clairvoyant). Lance wouldn’t lie about this, and fuck anyone who tried to claim he would. He was an asshole sometimes, particularly in regard to Keith, but he wasn’t so petty that he would claim any person he didn’t like was actually a red-suited fugitive doing weird clandestine activities in Warden just to get them in trouble. Lance was an occasional asshole, not a giant piece of shit.

It’s not like anyone would believe him though.

Lance groaned, turning over and burying his face in his pillow (his good pillow he brought from home, not the one the Garrison provided in dorms that was thin enough to fit into a printer and was uncomfortable enough to make puppies cry). He was fucked. Because he knew something of vital importance to authorities and he couldn’t even fucking tell anyone, because absolutely no one would believe that he genuinely wasn’t petty enough to falsely accuse someone of being a criminal just because he didn’t like them.

He could just...let it go. This group wasn’t actually hurting any people, or causing damage to the city. If they kept doing what they were doing, probably no one would get hurt except one of them. He could focus primarily on keeping his place at the Garrison, making sure he wasn’t expelled so he had a way home for this summer and at the end of next year. Sit back and let things just happen.

As Pidge used to say, “Lance, you really are incapable of letting go of anything.”

(To which Lance would usually reply, “The only reason you’re here is because you can’t either,” which Pidge would have to admit was completely true.)

If no one would believe him right now, fine. He’d get the identities of some of the others, or find some evidence that proved he was right. He had two weekends and all of Spring Break, and the Garrison released their students to allow them to go into Warden during the week if they couldn’t go home, only locking the doors at nine in the evening. Not a spectacular amount of time, but enough to give him a chance to figure out what was going on.

Keith had to be working somewhere in the city, Lance theorized immediately. Food, basic supplies, money, all that stuff, Keith would have eventually run out of at that shack, and considering how long it had been since he left the Garrison, Lance had every reason to assume that he eventually did. Despite his distance from Warden, it was still the closest civilization that would have jobs for a teen who needed them. It would probably be a low-income job, so Lance was looking for food service employee or cashier at a grocery store.

He could probably track down where Keith worked and investigate a little, maybe get an idea of the motives of a teenager who joined a secretive organization that, for all intents and purposes, literally just seemed like a group of incredibly skilled people destroying a shit ton of defense bots.

As for nighttime...Lance didn’t have much, but he did have a pair of ice skates and a plain white mask (which you could get for two bucks at a party store so likely at least twenty other people in the city owned a similar one). Add that hoodie he didn’t wear often and his improvised outfit for investigating this shit was complete. No better way to find out the motivations of a clandestine secret organization (Lance knew that was redundant and oh my god he didn’t care) than to do so by vigilante justice.

Okay no one ever said he was the most brilliant person out there.

His phone beeped, letting him know he had an email, and Lance removed his face from his pillow and opened it up.

> _Lance McClain-Sanchez,_
> 
> _You have been assigned to a new team, to start practicing with on the Monday after Spring Break. Further details about your new assignment will be sent to you sometime next week. If you are unable to work with this team, you will be expelled from the Garrison._
> 
> _Don’t end up like Keith._
> 
> _General Doug Iverson_

Lance’s eyes narrowed and he groaned, rolling back over onto his back. One last chance to avoid getting expelled. He could already tell he was probably going to blow it, or at the very least Iverson would believe he blew it, and end up stranded in Warden. That was terrifying, the thought of not being able to get home after losing his only place to stay. He had nowhere to go, no money to fly home, nothing. If he was booted, he was fucked.

Not like anyone at the Garrison cared, of course. Wes and Carter hadn’t cared when they fucked up his chances. Iverson didn’t care as he threatened him with the very real threat of expulsion. Nobody here fucking cared that a teenage boy with pretty much nothing in this city, or even this country really, would have no way of getting home if he was kicked out.

The only people who had actually fucking cared about Lance here disappeared two months ago, and without them, Lance had no team, no people to talk to, no chance. He was completely alone.

Lance was absolutely fucked, and his only hope was that this team, his last chance to make sure he had a way of getting home, would be willing to work with him. He had to rely on them not pulling a Wes and Carter when he had nothing else.

As if he didn’t have enough to fucking deal with.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The investigation begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at how I portray Iverson this chapter. Look at how young and foolish I was not even one year ago. Honestly, read this chapter for just the absolute hatred I had for Iverson up until Season 7. I'll try and fix that with some nuance in future chapters, try and keep this from just being complete character bashing, especially since this doesn't reflect my actual opinion anymore (Iverson is actually a pretty reasonable guy operating within a military position that doesn't allow for much leniency, plus operating under Sanda would make anyone a hardass). Please forgive me.
> 
> Additionally, I set this story in Nevada before coming up with my theory that the Garrison is actually located in Texas (which actually makes a lot of sense), so yeah. That's a thing. Either way it's a long trip.

Lance woke up early and dead tired the next morning, scowling at his phone before remembering why he set an alarm for five-thirty in the morning on a Saturday. Yawning, he sat himself up and rubbed his eyes. Today was not going to be fun.

His plan for today was simple: He was going to go to scope out the city to see if he could find out if Keith was working at any of the various minimum wage jobs around, and investigate him to find any sort of motive for why Keith spent his nights dressed in red armor doing a ridiculous amount of property damage.

Was it stalking if he was doing this to investigate the shady group Keith was working for?

(Yes. Yes, it was, Lance.)

It took Lance about twenty minutes to get himself ready for the day, and ten minutes to check out of the Garrison and head into Warden, his first destination being a coffee shop so he could actually survive going around the city and looking around for one guy with a shitty mullet among thousands of fucking people. He was not a morning person at all, and it was practically torture for him to get up so early, especially considering he had been out late last night.

Lance pushed open the dark wood doors of Castle Cafe and found his eyes immediately drawn to the dark blue wall behind the counter. They trailed over spirals of stars and planets that someone had painted across them, the amount of detail indicating the amount of effort and affection behind this. The other walls were painted pale purple and covered with photos taken from Hubble Telescope. Lance grinned at the images of nebulas and black holes before turning his attention back to the counter, finally noticing the barista and his very familiar mullet.

Lance wasn’t quite sure if his luck was ridiculously good or really fucking shitty at this point. Whatever it was, he simply shrugged and approached the counter, asking, “Can I have a grande java chip frappuccino, with whip?”

Keith looked at Lance after scribbling that down, his expression not changing whatsoever, and asked, “Name?”

“...Voldemort.”

He blinked, not reacting otherwise, and simply said, “$6.95.” Lance forked over the money and Keith added, “Your order will be ready shortly.” He then proceeded to grab a cup and write something down and started making Lance’s drink, clearly not really caring in the slightest.

Lance sat on a dark wood barstool, tapping his fingers against the matching counter. Honestly, he thought it would be more...interesting than this. He expected Keith acting shady or secretive, not absolutely dead inside. He just seemed like your standard morning shift barista right now. It was almost...disappointing.

Keith eventually got his attention and slid the drink over to him, and Lance looked at his cup and was disappointed to find that it read “Voldemort” instead of “the Dark Lord” or “He Who Must Not Be Named” or anything like that. He pouted as he took a sip, before finally deciding this injustice wouldn’t go unanswered. Goddammit, if he was going to make a Harry Potter reference, he expected Keith to go along with it (because that just always worked in his favor, expecting things out of people).

“You didn’t do it right,” Lance remarked, getting Keith’s attention. Again, the expression on his face didn’t change, though he tilted his head to express his confusion at what the fuck Lance was talking about. Lance continued, “You weren’t supposed to use his name.”

“‘Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself,’” Keith answered simply, not even looking at Lance as he grabbed a rag to start wiping down the counters.

...Okay, Lance would give him that one (damn him for having Dumbledore quotes on his side).

There was another period of silence before Lance decided that investigating probably involved actually talking to the person you were investigating, otherwise it was just stalking and ineffective anyway. So, he took another sip of his drink before asking, “You’re Keith, right?”

Keith blinked again, asking almost cautiously, “Yeah? And you are?”

Lance was rather offended that Keith didn’t remember him. “Lance. You know, I was in your class back at the Garrison?”

Keith somehow seemed to shut down even more than he had before, looking almost vaguely angry as he answered, “Oh.”

Lance, realizing he had somehow fucked up, immediately tried to remedy the situation the only way he knew how, and blurted out, “Iverson is still a piece of shit.” He crossed his fingers under the table, hoping that talking about how fucking awful Iverson was would make a good icebreaker. He didn’t want to fuck up his chances of figuring out why Keith was motivated to become part or some weird shady group, and realized in hindsight that maybe mentioning the school that kicked him out was probably not the smartest decision for doing that.

“...Didn’t expect that to change,” Keith admitted, and Lance did a mental victory dance. “Guy was always a piece of shit.” Alright, Lance had this! He found a point in common with Keith! Now he just needed to keep using this and hope for the best.

“I know, right?” Lance remarked, rolling his eyes. “He must have his head pretty far up his ass. Probably far enough to see his intestines.” It may have been awkward at first, but there was nothing Lance could do better than bitch about people. “I mean, this guy could give less of a shit about his students? A friend of mine once got sick in the simulator and the asshole just shouted at him for it!”

“Not surprising,” Keith responded, scowling. “My foster brother despised Iverson when he went there. He was one of the nicest people I know, and he could go on for hours about how much he hated Iverson.”

Lance nodded, noting, “Your foster brother sounds smart.”

Keith smirked a little, shrugging. “Yeah, he is...was.”

Okay, so Lance was not that big of an idiot, so the moment he heard that one specific word out of Keith’s mouth, he decided not to broach the subject. Because Lance could sometimes be an asshole, but he wasn’t so big of one that he’d bring up something that someone clearly didn’t want to talk about. So instead, he continued to do what he did best: Bitch about Iverson.

“You want to hear about another bullshit thing Iverson did?” he offered, smirking before taking another sip of his drink.

“...Go on.”

* * *

Lance found himself sitting in the coffee shop, bitching about Iverson with Keith until he went to take a sip of his drink and realized there was nothing left. He blinked, almost surprised at himself. He knew he was talented when it came to bitching about people for hours, but he never realized he was that talented.

This realization happened to align with a realization on Keith’s part too, as the bell at the door rang, causing Keith to snap into attention as a scowling man with a briefcase approached and ordered a black coffee, quite rudely in Lance’s honest opinion. Lance took that as his sign to leave so Keith could actually work.

“Well, that was fun,” he admitted to Keith as the customer left, as well as to himself. He never thought he’d have fun with anything, especially with fucking Keith of all people involved. Yet, here he was, actually enjoying himself. He guessed bitching about Iverson could save any awkward situation. It was a universal truth that Iverson was a dick, and could be thoroughly bitched about by anyone who had ever crossed paths with him.

Keith smirked and nodded, noting, “Yeah. Glad to see I’m not the only person who has considered punching Iverson. Though I did actually punch him before I left.”

Lance blinked, then grinned, “Seriously? You should have gotten a freaking medal for that.”

The barista shrugged, admitting, “I didn’t actually think it through. He said something awful though and I just...reacted.” He scowled. “I wouldn’t mind doing it again, to be honest.”

“You should sell tickets. You’d make a lot of money off doing that.”

“You think?”

“I know I’d pay to see it.”

The two laughed, and Lance stood up, noting, “Well, it was nice talking to you, Keith. See you later?”

“Yeah,” Keith answered, a smile making his way to his face. “Later.”

As Lance left the building, he grinned. He now had an in with Keith, which would make investigating him and his motives much easier than he had initially worried. He could tell he hadn’t quite gotten to the point where Keith would trust him to tell him more, but if he played his cards right, he’d figure out why he was spending his nights doing ridiculous amounts of property damage in a bright red armored costume.

Though...part of him did feel guilty about the idea of setting Keith up, making friends with him only to betray him in the end. Lance had been on the receiving end of that bs before, and it fucking sucked. And seeing as Keith wasn’t so bad...ah goddammit. How was he already losing his nerve for this? He had been so certain about this when he had started, dammit!

He’d keep going, keep investigating, and once he found out the motive and more information about this group, then he’d decide if turning Keith in was really the best option. For now, he just had to focus on getting the information, and not losing his nerve if it turned out that Keith’s motivations were less than good. Because it didn’t matter how much fun it was to bitch about Iverson with him; if that fucker was doing this to hurt people, Lance would fucking take him down himself.

* * *

Lance sat on the roof of a nearby building, regretting the mask. It felt hot and uncomfortable, his own breath being shot directly onto his face. The price of anonymity was the sheer discomfort of maintaining it, he guessed. But there was no way in hell he was forgoing the mask, even if his face was sweating and hot (and not in the way he wanted). Honestly, his entire outfit was just uncomfortable in the Nevada weather, a white hoodie, black sweatpants, and ice skates not exactly making the situation any cooler.

He could totally use his powers to cool off the air around him, alleviate the heat, but that would just tire him out and divide his focus, and he needed to pay attention to the scene before him.

Tonight, it was four out there. The three from the day before and another one in pink armor. Again, they directed their attention primarily to the defense bots, absolutely decimating them. Knowing that Keith was the one in the red armor helped Lance connect the dots, as he recalled seeing him in the simulators. He was fucking talented and fast, but he had always struggled with going on the defensive and working with the other members of his team. Lance recalled the literal fire that used to come off Keith and guessed that he was purposely avoiding using that power to keep people from figuring out who he was, instead utilizing his less recognizable speed boost. 

The one in pink was...just absolutely fucking brutal. They had a whip (or was it a lasso?) that they used to tear through the bots like they were made of paper. They had skill on par with the one in black armor, and an absolute demonesque fury in their attacks that almost burned brighter than Keith himself. Lance was practically shaking in pure fear, instantly deciding he never wanted to fight them in a one-on-one, because they would absolutely fucking destroy him before he could even try anything. He wouldn’t want to meet any of them in a dark alley, but he’d probably shit his pants as well as run if he ended up seeing that pink armor within a fifty-foot radius of himself.

Lance noticed a sentry aiming a laser gun at the back of Keith’s head, and, without even thinking it through, instantly reacted.

A sharp icicle launched downward, piercing through the gun and pinning it to the wall like a thumbtack. Keith, down at the bottom, whirled around, slicing the head off the sentry before looking at the icicle, then up to the roof where Lance had frozen.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

The others froze, almost as if they all heard something, and they all fucking bolted, clearly done with whatever the fuck they were doing. Lance spotted Keith heading towards the building and immediately moved to hide, because fuck everything, he wasn’t going to be doing any kind of confrontation tonight.

He created a path, making it look like he had skated off the roof, then immediately ducked behind the little storage building at the top, doing his best to get his breathing under control as a red blur zipped up the fire escape, looking around before seeing the path. There was a distorted sound that sounded almost like an aggravated grumble that came from Keith.

“Who the fuck was that?” Keith muttered, his voice distorted and unrecognizable. He tilted his head, almost as if he heard something, then sighed. “Fine. I’m heading back. God, this all just got more complicated.”

...Yeah, Keith had no right to fucking complain there.

* * *

Lance yanked his mask off after he got back to his room, flopping onto his bed and groaning in frustration. Stupid fucking idiot. He just fucking revealed his existence to Keith, and likely to the other fuckers in the glorified vandalism squad. Which meant that, just as he was investigating them, they were probably going to be trying to investigate him.

Just...he didn’t think Keith should fucking die? Because Lance still resented him for all the bullshit, but the fucker didn’t seem like a bad person yet and Lance had just...he just reacted. Keith was nearly going to get shot in the head and Lance had saved his life because fuck, he didn’t want to be the kind of person who just watched as someone got hurt in front of him instead of doing something. He had come to this school because of that, because he wanted to become the person who would protect people. Fuck, he still blamed himself for not being able to do anything before Pidge and Hunk disappeared (and it didn’t matter that he had the flu, because he should have at least paid attention, then he might know what happened to them and if they were okay or not).

Alright, so Lance’s morals still functioned. Fucking spectacular. But he had endangered his own fucking investigation and, depending on the shady group’s morals, possibly himself to prove that. So now he had to watch his step, make sure he didn’t fuck things up again and get himself killed. And he’d have to be smarter about this investigating. And that started with figuring out what the fuck was going on with this group, because things made less sense the more he learned about them.

Just...what was the connection? Why those specific locations? Why draw all those defense bots on themselves? Why commit glorified vandalism over and over again? Because there was too much thought put into this for it to just be for shits and giggles. The vocal distortion, the matching armor, the clear avoidance of using certain powers to avoid anyone making any connections. They clearly put a lot of effort into something that seemed to have no pay-off. Meaning there probably was some sort of connection between the locations and the defense bots and the attacks.

What was that fucking connection?

Because goddammit, nothing about this made any sense without some kind of motive. If you are just going to beat the crap out of bots, why put so much effort into matching armor with vocal distortion features in the helmets? Why specific locations instead of some place less public so you won’t have as many cops or civilians to deal with? Why even allow yourselves to draw so much fucking attention?

There had to be something, dammit.

He bit his lip, peeking under his bed. There was one option...but no. He wouldn’t touch that until it was absolutely necessary. He knew how particular Pidge had been about touching equipment and all that shit, and Lance would honor that until he wasn’t able to anymore.

Instead, he sat up, reaching for his computer bag and pulling his laptop out, turning it on and pulling up Google.

Time to do some fucking research.

* * *

Lance wanted to bang his head on his desk until he went into a fucking coma. Or possibly died. Honestly, either option wasn’t such a big deal compared to the actual torture that trying to find anything useful was causing him.

Because there were very little connections, if any at all, between the different locations.

He had been searching for goddamn hours and almost none of the locations were directly connected to any of the others in any fucking way.

All of them were businesses of some sort. Some were nearing bankruptcy while others were doing better than they had in years. The treatment of employees ran from mildly awful to notoriously terrible to how the fuck are they still in business?! No two of them were similar; There was Olkarion Industries, a small technology developing company that had employees walk out, compared to Vox Energy, which was notorious for a huge lawsuit a while back that had settled out of court.

It was all so fucking confusing and annoying and Lance fucking hated it so much that a coma or death didn’t seem so bad at the moment. But, he persisted, continuing to do research because he was a stubborn person and wasn’t giving this up until he found something. He knew that it couldn’t be for no good reason. There had to be something, dammit!

Eventually he closed his eyes to rest them for twenty seconds, the effort of keeping them open for so long painful and annoying, and woke up three hours later to his alarm blaring and making his head pound painfully.

Fuck. Fuck everything.

He grumbled in annoyance and plugged his dying computer in, shutting it off and setting it aside before heading to the bathroom to get ready. The lights made him wince, accentuating the pounding in his skull, but he pushed through because fuck it, if he was going to be doing this all week, he’d look fucking good while doing it.

Thank fucking God Keith worked at a coffee shop and not as a grocery store stocker or some shit like that, because Lance wasn’t sure he’d survive the week without the coffee that came with investigating him. He was absolutely fucking dead and he just wanted to sleep for a week. He’d just have to worry about this research later, and focus on getting what he needed to live.

With two Tylenol and a mental pep talk that just boiled down to, just fucking make it until Friday and then sleep for a year, Lance looked at himself in the mirror, took a deep breath, and headed out.

This was going to be the worst Spring Break ever.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance dies (but only on the inside).

Lance groaned in annoyance after a sharp jab to his arm, looking up to see Keith looking mildly concerned as he set Lance’s drink beside him. He grumbled a thank you and took a sip. The coffee with added espresso shots didn’t do much except take the edge off his headache, which was fucking spectacular in his opinion. Of course, even that couldn’t fix his terrible mood, which was a big reason why he chose not to talk to Keith much today. Yes, he was supposed to be getting information and all that shit, but he was surviving on three hours of sleep currently and he didn’t trust himself not to fuck this up incredibly.

Keith, mercifully, was not trying to start a conversation. He occasionally glanced at Lance with something that certainly looked like concern, almost as if he was considering saying something, then shook his head and focused on another task. Lance was certain that the counters could not possibly be more pristine and shining, yet Keith was on his fifth round of absently wiping them down.

The coffee shop was dead silent for about two minutes before the door to the backroom burst open, slamming into the wall with the effort put behind opening it and scaring the shit out of Lance, who, rather ungracefully, lurched and fell right off the stool. He flushed with embarrassment as he climbed back onto the stool, just in time to witness an actual goddess enter the cafe.

“Keith, you are needed in the back!” she sternly ordered, crossing her arms in front of her and scowling, seeming annoyed by something. Keith nodded silently, sparing Lance an apologetic look before disappearing into the backroom and shutting the door quietly behind him.

Lance barely noticed, still in awe of the woman in front of him. Her crystal blue-eyes fell on Lance, who was admittedly gaping, and her face quickly shifted from stern and irritated to warm and welcoming. Distantly he wondered how she got so talented at faking such a cordial expression because there was no way she had switched gears like that emotionally.

“I’m sorry about that,” she quickly apologized, giving a warm smile that immediately made Lance flush and his heart pound. “I’m Allura. I’m the owner of this cafe. And you are?”

_ You are working, Lance. You are working. You are supposed to be investigating Keith not flirting with his boss you will probably get yourself kicked out if you use the ‘boy of your dreams’ bs and you’ll deserve whatever asskicking this truly terrifying woman decides to give you. _

Lance stuttered, “Oh, um, I-I’m Lance? You-You have a nice cafe.” That wasn’t the only nice thing she had but he wasn’t going to say that aloud because he didn’t desire death and he was _working, dammit._ **_Focus!_**

“Thank you! I must admit that the only reason it exists is because of my unhealthy dependence on coffee.” Allura laughed a bit sheepishly and Lance wondered if there was a god, because they were slacking right now. Because goddammit, Lance was either blushing mess or Casanova, with no in-between, and since Casanova was fucking suicide at this point, he was currently incapable of pretending he could handle hot people.

(God this was almost as bad as the time he bumped into Takashi Shirogane at the Garrison. He was pretty sure he had actually imploded. Pidge and Hunk had laughed at him as he screamed into a pillow, because he had very nearly spouted off a dumb line to the original Garrison Golden boy in an attempt to act like he wasn’t dying inside. Holy shit Shiro had had a gorgeous smile.)

“C-Cool,” Lance stuttered, immediately pulling his drink up to his mouth to avoid being obligated to talk and digging himself further into a ditch.  _ Focus. You are here on a mission.  _

It wasn’t his fault he had functioning eyes, dammit.

Thankfully Keith returned to the front, and Lance wanted to cry in relief (wow he never thought that he’d rather deal with Keith than a hot girl he couldn’t flirt with). Instead he nearly burnt his tongue off as he took too big of a gulp and had to do his best to pretend he hadn’t, wishing for life to give him a fucking break for a few hours.

God his life was a fucking mess.

Keith looked Lance, who flushed a brighter red out of embarrassment, then looked at Allura and told her, “I handled the thing.”

She nodded and gave Lance a smile that sped up his heart faster than twelve cups of coffee or two pounds of cocaine ever could, saying, “It was nice to meet you! I do hope you’ll come again!” With that, she headed back into the back, and Lance wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sad. He chose the former as he looked at Keith, who raised an eyebrow at him.

“She’s...intimidating,” Lance noted, sipping his drink more carefully this time. That was the most honest answer he could manage, since he was pretty sure it wasn’t recommended to go on about how she literally looked like a goddess with her glorious mane of white hair and perfect skin and eyes that felt like they were stabbing him in the chest with how sharp of a blue they were and Jesus Christ, Lance,  _ focus! _

Keith snorted, drawing Lance’s attention again, and noted, “Yeah, most people find her pretty scary. If you think she is terrifying now, I hope you never have to spar with her.”

...It was almost cute how Keith completely missed  _ why _ Lance was intimidated. But he wasn’t exactly going to complain about the amazing Godsend that was Keith accidentally giving him an out, and goddammit, his life had taken a weird turn when he was wanting to fucking thank Keith, and was considering anything he had done cute.

_ Focus. _

Lance nodded, noting, “Yeah, I think I’ll pass.”

To be honest, if Allura wanted to step on him, he’d probably let her. That, however, was  _ not _ something he was willing to share with Keith, weird pseudo-friendship or not. So, he simply took another drink of his coffee, which he could barely taste after burning his tongue, and tried to act like he wasn’t a fucking mess right now.

Fuck it. He could worry about investigating tomorrow. His focus was completely gone and there was no fucking way he was going to be able to get any information out of Keith today after his train wreck of a brain screeching to a halt because hot people.

He hated his life. So fucking much.

“So, you’re on Spring Break right now, right?” Keith asked, and Lance nodded, barely paying attention. “Were you not able to go home?”

Lance shook his head. “Nope. My family is in Cuba and we can’t really afford the airfare. Garrison pays for my flights here and back for summer vacations but otherwise leaves us on our own for other payments. So, I’m basically here from August until June until I graduate.”

Keith sighed. “Right, that system. It fucking sucks. Though Shiro and I didn’t live as far as Cuba. Sorry you have to deal with that.”

“You didn’t live in Nevada?” Lance asked surprised.

Keith shook his head. “Nope. My former foster parents live in Texas currently.”

Lance instantly got an image of Keith sitting on the back of a horse with a cowboy hat saying, “Y’aint,” and nearly spit out his drink. He did his best to disguise his snickering, but Keith’s unamused face was a fantastic indication that he had failed miserably. He smiled innocently, but there was no gracefully explaining away that.

“I’m going to go ahead and tell you that it is less horses and cowboys and more unnecessary homophobia and racism.” Keith then paused, before adding, “Though cowboy hats are part of formal wear in Texas much more than they are in any other state. Formal wear is just all kinds of messed up there, now that I think of it. I’ve seen some people go to weddings in jeans and plaid shirts.”

“…Wow.” Lance shook his head. “Well I’m glad the Garrison isn’t in Texas. That place sounds unpleasant.”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, it is. My foster parents like it for some reason. I think it is Stockholm Syndrome.”

Lance snorted and finished his drink just as an orange haired man entered the coffee shop. Before anyone could do anything more than acknowledge his presence, the backroom door slammed open again.

“Coran!” Allura darted out of the backroom, fucking  _ vaulted _ over the counter, and tackle-hugged the man. Lance’s jaw dropped, and he found himself utterly speechless. Keith shook his head and began fix the napkin dispenser Allura knocked over when she  _ fucking vaulted over the counter like it was no big deal what the fuck! _

“What…What…What did I just witness?” Lance asked, staring in shock.

Keith shrugged. “Guess she was excited to see him.”

_ No fucking kidding?! _

“How do they know each other?” Lance asked, curious.

“Oh, he is her adoptive dad,” Keith answered. “He was off doing some business or other I think. Anyway, he’s been gone for a couple weeks now. Guess he got back early.”

…Lance was having too many mind-numbingly shocking moments today, and had had too little sleep to deal with it. It was time to cut his losses, say bye to Keith before his brain exploded again, and go get some rest. He was done with his drink anyway.

“Well, good luck with work today.” Lance stood up from his chair and stretched his arms before heading to the door. “Hasta la later, Keith.”

“Bye.”

* * *

Lance stayed in that night, instead pulling out his computer and getting back to work. After a nap that managed to make him feel less like death was knocking at his door, he felt that he was mentally in a better place to continue researching any sort of connection between the companies.

He started with the one with the most concerning lawsuit: Vox Energy. A woman working there had sued due to horrible working conditions but had been forced to settle due to financial concerns. Her identity was kept anonymous to keep her safe. There had been anonymous complaints for years now, everything from withholding paychecks to actual bodily harm to the workers. Yet, none of those accounts ever made front page news, only the lawsuit. Lance had to dig deep to even find those accounts.

There were no complaints before ten years ago apparently, but Lance struggled to find any inciting incident that caused the sudden plummet in work conditions.

Across the businesses however, there were similar situations. There was a mass walk-out of workers from Olkarion Industries, and the business somehow didn’t manage to fall under in the time it took to hire all new workers. Taujeer Chemical Plant had an explosion after higher ups refused to listen to warnings from the engineers, leading to people dying. None of their families were compensated. 

Neither of these places had any issues ten years prior. But Lance just couldn’t figure out what caused the shift. And somehow there was no consequence for all the shit that they did! How could there just be nothing?

Lance kept looking.

Several other people had commented on the lack of consequences. There were protests by the family members of the dead workers from the chemical plant and other citizens concerned. Former employees of Olkarion spoke out against the working conditions. But it seemed that the most vocal voices were always silenced within a month.

Sarah Ryner, leader of the group that walked out of Olkarion, vanished after an interview discussing the work conditions, and the journalist that interviewed her was fired. The leaders of the protests against Taujeer either went silent or went missing. Journalists who covered the protests in a positive light disappeared from the papers and from TV screens as those stories fell out of the public eye. And no one seemed to notice they were all gone.

Whatever had happened to these companies to cause such a decline, no one who cared ever lasted long in the public eye. The fact that Lance had to scroll through so much to even find anything on the disappearances was even worse. It was like no one cared that these people were trying to fight for justice for their families and their coworkers and now couldn’t be found. Why was no one investigating this? Why was he only hearing about this now? He had been in America nine months out of the year for almost three years now and he had heard nothing! Even if it wasn’t national news, people should have been talking about it in the Garrison, or in Warden itself!

No wonder Pidge hated this city so much.

Lance scowled at the computer, annoyed by all the bullshit. Well, he could understand why the expensive vandals would attack the businesses in some sense, but he felt that wasn’t quite it. Besides, attacking the businesses themselves was going to hurt the workers more than it hurt the people in charge. And the businesses themselves weren’t even being attacked. They were just getting a bunch of sentries destroyed in front of them. Which wasn’t doing anything about the terrible business practices.

Lance  _ refused _ to accept that Keith shelled out the money for expensive armor with a voice changing helmet and a fancy sword to do something stupid for a pointless reason. He may have hated him up until recently and still resented him for a lot of shit, but he didn’t think he was an idiot. There had to be a good reason for this shit, because if Keith was participating in stupidly expensive vandalism in a terrible attempt to protest, he wasn’t half as smart as he made himself out to be when he went to the Garrison.

There had to be something more to this. Because if all they wanted to do was protest, they could wear Party City masks and wield baseball bats and get the same message across. They certainly didn’t need fancy color-coded armor and pyrotechnics and expensive weapons to destroy a bunch of sentries. That seemed like skewed priorities if Lance had ever seen any, and he once lied about someone hiding a cat in their room simply because he was mad at them for being naturally good at shit.

He needed to keep digging. He needed to find something. Because it was eating up at him that he just didn’t know what was going on. He felt so completely out of the loop and he hated it. He needed to figure out why Keith of all people was doing this, and now he also needed to know why no once seemed to care anymore about those being actively hurt in this damn city.

Lance glanced at the clock and instantly realized the flaw in the “keep digging until I find something starting now” plan. The flaw being that it was already late, and he might genuinely die if he kept trying to pull the stay up late every night stunt for a week while also going early every morning just to  hang out with investigate Keith. He already felt like shit after just one night of that, and he wasn’t going to be effective at this if he didn’t take care of himself. He had to do the smart thing and get some sleep, or he’d be absolute shit at this whole investigating shebang.

With great reluctance, Lance bookmarked the important articles and closed his browser, shutting down his computer and setting it on his desk. And if he struggled to go to sleep that night, that was probably just the blue light exposure, and certainly not his mind struggling to comprehend this conspiracy that he felt completely and hopelessly lost on.

Nope. Not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I set the Garrison in Nevada in this story before I ever started theorizing the Garrison was in Texas. I mean, Keith has a lot of reasons why he didn't go back to Texas, and money is not a major one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura tries to murder a stain and Lance experiments with some new tactics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think there will be more longer chapters in the future, but for now here's another chapter that is under half the word count of the first one. I am so consistent guys!

“You don’t look like death,” Keith remarked bluntly when Lance entered the coffee shop the next morning.

Lance, who felt nice and clean after showering, washing and moisturizing his face, combing his hair, and dressing in comfortable and good-looking clothes instead of the Depression Couture™ that he had donned yesterday out of pure exhaustion, responded only partially sarcastically, “Thanks for noticing!”

He quickly ordered and paid, and Keith asked, “So, what’s the name today?”

“The Doctor.”

The corner of Keith’s lips quirked up. “Doctor who?”

“Exactly.”

Keith snorted before quickly scribbling on the cup, saying, “Your order will be out shortly.”

“Awesome.” Lance slid into his seat at the bar, stretching his arms in the air. He wasn’t 100%, but he felt a lot better than he had yesterday, and it only took a bit of concealer to hide the dark circles under his eyes. Managing to summon the energy to clean himself up and go through his usual morning routine certainly helped his mental state today, and he only felt about 30% like death!

…Okay maybe feeling at all like death wasn’t much of an indicator of him having a sort of decent morning despite his late to bed and early to rise schtick that hopefully wasn’t going to become a habit after this week. He wasn’t sure how Keith handled it with both his nighttime hobbies and his job requiring him up so early.

Then again, Lance recalled how dull and lifeless he acted generally at his job and concluded that he was handling it only a bit better out of habit.

When he finally got his cup, he noticed a messy doodle of the TARDIS, causing a grin to make its way to his face.

He was sipping at his drink and enjoying the silence as he attempted to figure out a question that was not too probing to make Keith suspicious but enough that he could get some genuine information out of him when Allura came from the back room, this time without slamming the door into the wall.

“Phone call for you, Keith,” she told him, gesturing for him to head to the back. 

Keith looked at Lance and shrugged before heading back, shutting the door behind him. Allura gave an apologetic smile before beginning to wipe down the counters, humming to herself a strange tune as she did.

…Eh, he could work with this.

“So, why did you decide to start a coffee shop?” Lance asked, deciding to start with a simple, innocent sounding question. Loosen her up a little bit and then start with the probing questions about Keith and so on.

He could totally pretend that this was all according to plan.

“Mostly it was an unhealthy dependence on caffeine and money I had no idea what to do with,” she noted with a shrug. “My adoptive father also encouraged me to start a business, believing I would be successful. I haven’t gone bankrupt yet, so I suppose he was correct.” She began scrubbing at a stain on the counter, her lips twisting in annoyance as it stubbornly refused to come up.

“Neat,” Lance noted, inwardly cursing immediately at how unnatural that sounded. Why did all his acting talent have to fly away from him at the worst points? “Do you have any other employees? I’ve only ever seen Keith and you working here?”

She scowled at the tenacious stain before answering, “Yes. I have other baristas. There is also-darn you, stain-there is also a baker I am friends with who makes the pastries. I had to spend an hour to convince him to take payment for providing the service.” She rummaged through the area under the counter before finding some cleaner.

Lance watched her aggressively attack the stain with a viciousness that send a thrill of terror through him before asking, “So, Keith and you are good friends then? He mentioned that you two sparred once.”

“Yes, he is-Aha, take that, you infernal spot!” She grinned proudly as the stain finally came up, before putting away the cleaner and finishing, “He is a worthy opponent. Not the most difficult one I have faced of course, but it was an entertaining diversion.”

…Lance was terrified that she considered sparring with the guy who spent his nights fighting defense bots with a sword “an entertaining diversion.” Suddenly Keith’s warning about not facing her rang in his ears, and his terror turned into immediate suspicion. Friends with Keith and an amazing fighter who also just happened to hire Keith for the job that was probably the only source of income he had.

She had to be involved.

He was scouring his brain for any more questions that could provide insight when Keith returned, saying, “Everything was handled, Allura.”

“Alright. It was nice talking to you, Lance.”

“Thanks, Ms…”

“Baldric. You are welcome to call me Allura of course.”

Lance smiled, making sure to take note of the full name as he waved to her retreating form before the door to the backroom shut. He would do a Google search of her name when he got home, see if he could find anything about her that could help his investigation.

“So, how’s Spring Break going for you so far?” Keith asked, clearly attempting to start conversation.

Lance grinned, allowing himself to relax. “I think it’s going great.”

* * *

Once he was back at the Garrison, he pulled out his computer and started it up. If the Allura connection bore fruit, he’d have to look at the other employees at the coffee shop and Coran probably. Considering Keith, it was possible that other members of the group were also working there, and Coran could possibly be involved if his adoptive daughter was. Still, he needed to stop assuming until he got information that confirmed or denied the connection.

He wondered how Keith and Allura had met, if she really was a part of the same weird clandestine group Keith was. Had they met prior to Keith getting booted from the Garrison, or afterward? Was she the one that got him involved, or vice versa? What was their motivation for the ludicrously expensive vandalism they kept committing?

He was interrupted by his computer finishing booting up and logged in, opening his browser and Googling Allura’s name.

Of all the articles he expected to find, one about an explosion at the very top of the search results was not one of them.

He opened the article and began reading through it, and his stomach fell as he read. He felt almost…ill as he read about the horrible explosion that had destroyed the Altea Industries headquarters, and how hundreds of people had died, including the owner and CEO, Alfor Baldric. Apparently two of the few survivors were Alfor’s sixteen-year-old daughter Allura and his best friend and coworker Coran Smythe.

They never found out where the bomb had come from. Altea Industries fell apart afterwards, and what was left was bought out by another company, Galra Inc.

Lance didn’t feel accomplished. He felt like he had intruded on something horribly private. He couldn’t imagine what it felt like to lose your father and your livelihood and then have your name spread everywhere as the poor teenage girl who lost everything, to have the first result when someone searched your name to be a rehashing of pretty much all the awfulness that had destroyed your life.

He nearly turned off the computer and put it away for the day, but he stopped, remembering one detail of the article that he had overlooked at first.

Galra Inc…he had heard of it before, but he couldn’t remember where.

Maybe…was it possible?

He dug deeper, opening a new tab and searching this new information.

Every single business that the super vandals had attacked had been bought by Galra Inc. Most were quiet, barely a footnote in a Wikipedia article, but all the awful things that happened to each one occurred after Galra had taken over. The walk out of Olkari, the explosion at Taujeer, the lawsuit at Vox Energy. None of that had happened before Galra had gotten involved.

And it occurred to him how weird it was that after the explosion, Galra Inc. just swooped in and scooped up what was left.

But if Galra was responsible for the bombing, then Allura’s involvement with the group made perfect sense. If Lance had lost a family member to Galra, he’d want to lash out too.

He had seen the Galra logo before. He had seen that symbol somewhere, just as he had heard the name. Yet he couldn’t think of where.

He took a deep breath and closed his computer. He knew he would need to go out that night, continue his investigation. He would have to change his focus, though, because simply observing the group wouldn’t make what they were doing any clearer.

Lance did a quick search, looking for a place that would make a good target tonight for the super vandals. Once he found the perfect one, a small branch of the company that worked primarily in the production and sale of lab equipment, he looked at the backpack that held his mask and hoodie and took a deep breath, not quite sure if he was prepared but knowing he’d have to go through with it.

He was going to break so many laws tonight.

* * *

Pidge was a genius, and probably the only reason that Lance had even the slightest chance of pulling off this ridiculous stunt. Still, the weight of the flash drives in his pockets felt greater than it should have. He didn’t feel as if he had the right to use Pidge’s prized equipment for this mission.

Then again, Pidge would probably approve of him using them to investigate a corrupt business that had probably been responsible for too many damn deaths, considering the original use for them was to investigate corruption after all.

Once he heard the initial attention-grabbing screech that told him the group was attacking, Lance waited for the security bots to file out before sneaking inside the building, heading up to the CEO’s office as carefully as possible.

The door was locked, but Lance simply had to freeze the lock and shatter it with a hard strike and he was in.

Inside, the office looked average, taken up mostly by a large wood desk with two uncomfortable looking chairs on the side Lance was facing, and a much more comfortable leather chair on the side the CEO would sit on. There was a desktop computer screen on the desk too, and Lance merely had to walk to the other side of the desk and kneel to find the computer itself. From there, it was easy to pull his hoodie sleeve over his hand and press the on button through the fabric, then stick both flash drives in the USB slots.

Pidge, the clever little smarty-pants, had explained the nature of these flash drives a long time ago, and he had made sure they were one of the things he rescued when the Garrison went to clean out Pidge’s stuff. They had a program on them that copied all the documents on the computer to the flash drives, meaning that Lance could easily get the information without having to worry about hacking into the computers himself.

Once the documents were all copied onto both drives, Lance reached to remove them when the door opened, and he looked up to see two of the armored weirdos themselves, a small green one and the large yellow one.

Oh. It all made sense now.

“Who the hell are you?” the green one asked, their voice distorted similar to how Keith’s was the other night.

Lance, not having the luxury of a voice changer, merely looked at the two flash drives in his hands and tossed one at them. The green one caught it neatly, and he took the opportunity to dash for the window, pulling it open.

“Hey, wait!” the yellow one called, stepping forward, but Lance simply gave a silent salute and jumped out the window.

By the time the two got to the window to look for him, he was gone, the only sign he had been there a pile of snow under the window and a trail of ice heading away from it.

* * *

Lance was still anxious as he snuck back into the Garrison, dodging security like it was second nature to him at this point. He decided that he wouldn’t look at the flash drive tonight, as a cautionary measure. Instead, he would sleep with it on his person, just to be safe, and look at it after he returned from the coffee shop tomorrow.

He was looking around to make sure that none of the teachers were wandering around when he looked at the poster of sponsors for the Garrison, and he was about to roll his eyes and dismiss it as he always did when a symbol caught his eye.

His blood ran as cold as the ice he could summon as he stared at the image with shock and horror.

Among the Garrison’s numerous sponsors, the dark purple Galra logo stood out, and Lance knew instantly that things weren’t going to be simple from that moment on.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It'll make sense later on.

“Name?”

Lance blinked before looking at Keith, then remembered the daily ritual and flushed with embarrassment. “Oh, uh…Sokka.”

Keith looked him over before nodding, getting to work on the drink as Lance slid into his usual seat.

He was, admittedly, distracted. After the events of last night, the knowledge that the likely corrupt business that had probably been responsible for numerous deaths in Warden was also one of the sponsors of the hellhole school he went to, he was still shaken. Had his scholarship money been from Galra? What about Hunk’s or Pidge’s? Was Keith booted for his obvious dislike for the company?

Speaking of Keith’s dislike of Galra, he finally understood the purpose behind the super vandals. The security people would all be focused on the more visible threat outside, and never notice the infiltrators inside. What were they trying to get by breaking in and checking the computers though? He understood the purpose of the attacks, but he still didn’t get the motive. What was the end goal? Were they selling Galra’s secrets or trying to find evidence of wrongdoing by the company, or was there something bigger going on?

Keith slid his drink over to him, drawing his attention from his thoughts, and he looked at the cup and snorted at the slightly wonky looking boomerang that was beside the name. He looked up to see Keith’s hint of a smirk before the boy turned his face away to hide it.

Lance bit his lip. He knew what he needed to ask, but he remembered the sick feeling in his stomach from finding what had happened to Allura and wasn’t sure if he was up for the probing questions today. This thing with him and Keith, friendship or whatever, wasn’t exactly potentially meaningful enough to attempt to poke at whatever issues Keith had without him rightfully earning a punch to the face.

…Wait…

“So, what motivated you to do what we all have wanted to do?” Lance asked, sipping his drink.

“Huh?”

“Why’d you punch Iverson in the face?”

“Oh.” Keith hesitated for a moment. “It’s…uh…it’s a bit of a long story?”

“I’ve got time.” Lance shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” That was true. Lance wanted to get insight into what had happened that led to Keith getting expelled, to see if that contributed to what the hell he chose to do at night, but he also knew that if it was too personal, pushing the issue would definitely set the two of them back in a way he wouldn’t be able to make up for entirely before spring break ended.

(And, though he didn’t want to admit it, he actually enjoyed hanging out with Keith. He wasn’t nearly as bad as Lance had thought he was back when they were both students at the Garrison.)

Keith looked at him, as if trying to analyze Lance for something, before sighing.

“Iverson insulted my foster brother,” Keith admitted, “and before when he was calling me a disruption and going on about my attitude problem and how I was a waste of talent, I was managing to keep calm, but he insulted Shiro and I just snapped.” He began to wipe the counters, refusing to look at Lance. “Iverson is a dick, and I fully expected him to be a dick, but he went too far, and I don’t regret punching him.”

Lance should have felt guilty again, especially since he had pushed Keith into admitting something personal despite his misgivings, but his brain had rewinded and paused at one moment in that explanation and he nearly spit out his drink.

“Shiro was your foster brother?!”

Keith blinked in surprise. “You didn’t know that? I thought that was fairly common knowledge.”

He hadn’t. He genuinely hadn’t. With Lance, the whole thing was that Keith was evil incarnate for being the best effortlessly and a pedestal that no one could reach, much less Lance, and Shiro was the very attractive graduate that Lance had a very minor crush on and a lot of hero worship for. He had never actually considered that the two were related, even if only as a foster family situation, but now that he thought about it, he had only seen Shiro at the Garrison either to assist with lessons at the request of one of the instructors or within a ten feet radius of Keith. Holy shit, he was stupid.

“I didn’t realize,” he muttered, facepalming. “Oh my god, it all makes sense now!”

God, Hunk and Pidge had snickered so much when he had whined about how attractive Shiro was for a reason.

Wait.

_Oh my god, Shiro was Texan._

“Well, now you know I guess,” Keith noted with a shrug. “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t want unnecessary favoritism and Shiro didn’t want them to pressure me with expecting me to be like him, so we mostly didn’t talk about it that much.”

…Lance could certainly understand that. He and his sister had kept their sibling relationship on the down low when she was working at the Garrison, mostly to prevent this kind of situation, since Veronica was a golden child and Lance was a bit more of a class clown. Of course, then everyone was wanting him to be more like Keith, negating any benefits that hiding the sibling relationship could have offered.

“That makes sense,” he noted. “Honestly, I can’t believe Iverson genuinely insulted Shiro. Considering how he talked you up to all of us, I’d expect ‘Be more like Shiro’ over insulting him. What crawled up his ass and died?”

“I…I don’t know. A lot of teachers started ragging on Shiro after…a big reason I was getting punished all the time was because of how I kept getting in fights with the instructors over it. Some of them still appreciated him, but others were insulting him all the time.” Keith frowned. “Now that I think about it, it’s actually really weird. You’d think they’d have talked him up after what happened.”

Lance nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah…weird.”

Just another thing to investigate.

Super.

* * *

There were a lot of documents.

Like holy shit there were so many documents, and most of them were super boring like talking about labs they distributed to and whatever or sales. Lance was just shocked by how boring being a CEO must be.

So, for normal business things, Galra was so incredibly boring.

Still, he saved the documents discussing laboratories they distributed to, already having a feeling that they could be useful for future investigations before continuing to search through the documents.

There were no simple, easily available answers, and yeah Lance wasn’t exactly looking for a file that said, “EVIDENCE OF ALL THE CRUEL INHUMANE THINGS MY PARENT COMPANY DID,” he still thought it would be easier to find the questionable shit. If he was honest, it probably would have been easier to find questionable shit if he had searched through the CEO’s emails or memos instead of just copying all the documents and hoping for the best.

Great, so he had some innocuous information he didn’t know what to do with and a maybe helpful list of labs in Warden that Galra might be heavily involved with.

Spectacular. What else was new?

There was a knock on the door of his dorm, and he closed his computer and opened the door to find the secretary there.

“I’ve got a letter for you, Lance,” she said cheerfully. “I’m glad I caught you. I’d have thought you’d be out on the town right now.”

“Nah, I’m feeling a bit tired right now, so I thought I’d lounge around. Might do a spa day.”

She nodded. “You have fun then!” With that, she headed back down the hall to deliver mail to other students.

He shut the door behind him and sat on the bed, looking at the envelope with surprise. Instead of Veronica’s messy scrawl or his mother’s neat script, the address on the envelope was typed on, indicating to him immediately that this wasn’t from his family. This was proven further by the lack of return address, indicating that, whoever had sent him this, they didn’t want a response.

Lance didn’t trust it.

Rooting around through a drawer of some of Hunk’s old stuff, he managed to find a pair of nitrile gloves and pulled them on, before tying a bandana around his face. He had once heard about anthrax spread through envelopes from Pidge when she had told him about past terror attacks in America. Of course, it was kind of silly to assume that someone would target him with anthrax, but it was generally pretty silly for him to get letters from anyone other than his family and certainly not without a return address.

Once he felt secure with his hands covered and face shielded, he tore open the envelope.

Inside was a small piece of paper, only about the size of a cell phone. Lance pulled it out and stared with wide eyes at the image he saw there.

He _remembered_ taking that picture.

It was a selfie he had taken with Pidge and Hunk after they had passed their first simulator, something that had taken them practically months to do and had been hard won. He had pulled out his phone and tugged Pidge into the frame and Hunk hadn’t even hesitated to squeeze his head into the picture next to Lance’s. Despite the not quite comfortable position, all three were grinning with excitement at the biggest screw-you to the school that had put them at the bottom of their class and the instructor who had dismissed them as failures. It was Lance’s favorite picture, the only one he had from the Garrison that made him genuinely happy, and he had made it his home screen on his phone.

But this piece of paper had red X’s over Pidge and Hunk’s faces in thick red marker, and on the back was written in the same marker, “Back off or you’re next.”

Lance could barely breathe. The picture fell from his fingers as he began to panic.

How had they known? They couldn’t have known. They shouldn’t! Were they monitoring his nightly activities? No, they couldn’t have known about that? What about his computer? That was possible. Were they watching him? Oh god, there might be cameras in his room.             

He needed to breathe, needed to calm down, needed to _think_.

_In...two...three...four. Hold...two...three...four. Out...two...three...four._

He forced himself to breathe properly, counting his breaths as he did so. He needed to focus, and he couldn’t do that when he wasn’t getting oxygen to his brain, when he was panicking without having all the facts.

It took him several minutes to finally calm down enough to think clearly again.

Okay, start with the obvious. Someone knew he was researching this and they were threatening him to get him to get off this case. First off, how did they know?

Searching through his phone would have gotten them the selfie, but none of the information he had been searching for. But, if he remembered right, he plugged his phone into his computer and transferred photos to it routinely so that he wouldn’t have to delete any to make space on his phone, meaning that they could have gotten the picture and his search history from his computer.

Why would they be monitoring his computer though?

As he thought about it, he decided there were two options that were most likely. Either the Garrison monitored everyone’s technology, or they were specifically monitoring his because of his connection to Pidge and Hunk, the two students who had disappeared. Galra, having direct involvement with the Garrison, could thus see that he had been looking into their less savory activities and shut him down. Either way, using his computer for research was no longer a viable option, since doing so would clearly have consequences.

The picture though. The way it was ruined was strange. Lance had pictures of his family on his computer; if Galra wanted to threaten him to make him stop, they could have easily used one of those photos to make a threat towards his family. Why would they instead choose his best friends, who Lance hadn’t seen in months and had basically vanished off the face of the planet? Lance couldn’t exactly expect them to be threatened when no one could even find them.

Then it hit him. Oh, of course. It suddenly made perfect sense.

The only reason Pidge and Hunk were brought into this at all was _because_ they had disappeared. The vandalized photo implied that they had been looking into Galra too, and that was why they had disappeared. Galra must have assumed that he was continuing his friends’ research and sent him the threat to show that if he kept looking into this, he would end up just like them.

But the only reason Pidge would have investigated Galra was if it had something to do with…

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck of fuckity fuck he was so fucked.

He reached under his bed and pulled out an external drive, another thing he had grabbed from Pidge’s room, and plugged it into his computer. It took him a while, but eventually he had put everything he actually cared about onto it and disconnected it.

With that, he took his computer and approached the window. He set it down for a moment to unlock the window and pulled it open. Then, with a deep breath, he picked his computer back up and threw it out the window as hard as he could, watching as it broke into pieces when it hit the concrete.

Welp, there was a few hundred bucks he owed his mother.

* * *

There was no attack that night, as far as Lance could see. That was fine for him though. He didn’t want to have to go investigate what they were doing or anything like that. It meant he could simply have a quiet night doing what he wanted to do and calm down after the panic of the day.

He didn’t want to stay in his room that night. It didn’t feel safe anymore, after the letter he got. Not only that, but he just wanted an excuse to get out and do something other than just sit on his bed and think about how who the hell knew where his friends-

No. Not right now. If he went down that road, he didn’t know what he would do with where he ended up, but he didn’t think it would be very pleasant.

He pulled on his ice skates and tying the laces felt like muscle memory. He remembered when Marco had bought them for him as a present for Christmas, and he took ice skating lessons for weeks before he felt comfortable enough to start skating on the ice he created himself. Sometimes his powers felt like they weren’t anything compared to others. He wasn’t as fast as Keith or as strong as Hunk or as agile as some of his classmates, but none of them could even compare to him on the ice.

That was part of the reason he kept it secret, because he knew that the moment he shared the one ability he felt confident in, someone would tell him he wasn’t good enough at it.

The other reason came later, when Pidge finally decided it was alright to confide in him and Hunk. Suddenly his power felt less like something he had to protect and more like something that could get him killed. Being mundane was safe, even if Lance hated it. There were times where he had almost used his powers, just to prove he was just as good as anyone else, but he didn’t.

Takashi Shirogane wasn’t mundane. Neither was Matthew Holt.

They were gone now.

His skates tied and path forming, Lance took a deep breath and took off, getting into the rhythm of movement before picking up speed. The lights of the city blurred as his sped past them, leaving a trail of melting slush behind him for the civilians to wonder about later, when he was too far gone for them to catch him.

Finally, miles away from his starting point, he slid to a stop just outside the city. His face felt hot and humid from the mask shooting his panting breaths back into his face, and he resisted the urge to lift the mask and let the cool night air reach his face.

It was a good thing he hadn’t, because a red blur headed his way.

Lance scowled behind the mask, then noticed that Keith was running along his path. If he just…refroze it…

Keith, in his red armored glory, slipped _spectacularly_. Like, it was practically graceful in how his feet slipped and flew out from beneath him when the ice solidified, and he had so much momentum that he slid on his ass for several yards before he finally began to slow. It was ridiculous and amazing and hilarious all at once, and if Lance hadn’t taken the opportunity to skate away after refreezing the ice, he would have probably burst out laughing.

That didn’t mean he didn’t snicker a little when he heard the modulated yelp and turned to look at Keith sliding on his butt.

It wasn’t until he was midway through sneaking back into the Garrison that he realized that the reason Keith was following him was probably because of his run in with the green and yellow armored ones from the day before, meaning that the group Keith was part of was now going to be keeping an eye out for him.

Things were getting more complicated by the minute.

When he finally flopped on his bed, he thought about all the stuff he had smuggled from Pidge’s dorm, all of it hidden under his bed. He hadn’t managed to get anything of emotional value, mostly because Pidge hadn’t really had anything like that in there. If he wanted to continue this investigation though, he needed to do it under the Garrison’s radar to make sure Galra never found out, and the only way to do that was to ditch the computer they were monitoring.

Luckily, Pidge had him covered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance just yeets his computer against the sidewalk.
> 
> But yeah, Lance is getting little bits figured out at a time, and some of this chapter was properly updated to fit Season 7, specifically with Veronica and her former place at the Garrison (gee, I wonder what happened there). And Iverson will get a sympathetic moment in the future. You'll just have to be like Aaron Burr and wait for it (without shooting somebody please).
> 
> ~~I actually always intended for Iverson to have one sympathetic moment, but it was going to come too late in the story to actually be any relief from the character bashing that would have gone on throughout the entire story, but this time I actually have a plan for his character that is much more nuanced, because sometimes I'm wrong and I can accept that.~~


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance doesn't know a lot of things, but it becomes a bit clearer exactly what things he does know.

“No.”

“Aw, come on, Keith!”

Keith gave him a withering look as he held the empty cup to write the name on, firmly saying, “I am not going to put your name down as Don Juan, Lance. Pick something else.”

Lance was very tempted to press the issue, but then decided it wasn’t worth pissing him off, so he merely sighed and said, “Blue Ranger, then, since you banned my creative one for today.”

“Better. Your drink will be done shortly.”

Lance grumbled, more for show than anything though, and slid into the usual seat. He consoled himself by remembering how Keith had fallen on his ass the previous night, and how technically speaking this was karma for being the cause of that.

If it weren’t for the bombshell yesterday, Lance would have been poking Keith a bit for questions, trying to draw his motivation for joining the weird group of vigilantes(?) out. That wasn’t his plan for today though. The threat had provided him with the motivation Keith had for wanting to fight Galra, and Lance wasn’t in the mood for getting information today.

Today, Lance was mostly here because hanging out with Keith was better than sitting alone in his room, gathering his own motivation to continue the search. And if it meant his attempts at a clever and creative nickname were shot down, so be it.

(Admitting that he kind of wanted to have Keith as a friend was still kind of unbearable of course.)

When his drink was halfway done, the two sat in comfortable silence, and Lance was surprised when, of the two, it was Keith who broke it.

“So…how has your Spring Break been?”

Lance gave a sigh, simply saying, “Exhausting. I mostly just want to go home.” He took a sip of his drink and thought about how uncomplicated things were back at home. It would have been nice to be there instead of here, uninvolved in the bullshit politics and death threats.

But then he never would have known about Pidge and Hunk.

“Yeah, the Garrison should at least let you go home for breaks,” Keith remarked with a scowl. “I mean, come on. If you are going to basically have a full-time job with no pay, they should at least let you go home.”

“Well I’m a scholarship student, so being there is my pay,” Lance explained with a scowl. “I think you got the worse end of the stick. They couldn’t even pay for you to go home to your foster family? That’s such fucking bullshit.” Lance was particularly attached to the plane ticket home from the Garrison at the beginning of the summer, if nothing else, and getting that ripped away seemed like torture.

Keith pressed his lips into a thin line as he wiped the same spot he had been wiping since he had finished Lance’s drink, before saying, “I probably wouldn’t have gone even if they had, to be honest.”

Lance nearly spit out his coffee in surprise because that was probably the closest thing to opening up that Keith had done since this routine had started for fuck’s sake. Thankfully Keith had seemed preoccupied with that one spot of the counter, because Lance’s shock might have been enough to make him close back up again.

“How come?” Lance asked, a bit hesitantly.

Keith simply said, “Unfinished business,” and that ended that tangent before it could properly start.

It was almost a relief. After all the drama of the previous night, Lance wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear Keith’s tragic backstory. But then the thought that maybe Keith needed to talk about it left him with a pit in his stomach, and he silently sipped his drink in an attempt to fill it.

Keith had been fucked over bad after all, losing his brother.

* * *

Lance pulled a bag from under his bed, slipping it under his shirt and taking it to the bathroom.

Perhaps sitting in the shower wasn’t the most covert, spy ops thing in the world, but honestly if the Garrison put cameras in the showers then Lance was suing, and his mother would probably raise more hell than the Devil himself, and Veronica would come back to the Garrison just to kick the ass of whoever approved that terrible decision. Probably literally, knowing Veronica. His mom would probably help.

Either way, the shower was probably the safest place to pull out his secret weapon. Or, more accurately, Pidge’s.

(God, that sounded terrible when he thought about it too hard.)

He pulled the bag out from under his shirt, unzipping it and looking inside the bag with the reverence someone might direct at a shrine. It was, in a way, exactly that. A shrine to a person who was probably never going to see the beloved device ever again. Lance almost didn’t want to touch it, remembering how Hunk had almost lost a hand when his curiosity about the homemade computer got out of control. It took him a few minutes to gather up the courage to finally pull the computer out of the bag.

Pidge’s precious Rover.

He opened the computer, powering it on. After a few moments, he was greeted with a screen with a password box for him to fill.

_katiejaneholt_

The desktop opened, and Lance was greeted by the familiar sight of files and homemade applications. Then, a small chat box opened in the corner, with two words shown in it.

_Where’s Katie?_

Lance bit his lip. This was another reason he had hesitated to use this computer before, knowing that it was a bit more than just a regular old computer, just like how Pidge was more than just a super genius. Any genius, or even someone with just above average intelligence, could make a homemade computer. But only a technopath like Katie Holt could take that homemade computer and make it into almost a living thing.

He answered Rover as honestly as he could.

_I don’t know._

There was a long pause, and then the mouse moved of its own accord. Not surprising, knowing Rover. They used to mess with Pidge by opening “Never Gonna Give You Up” in a new tab, and sometimes when she was up too late they would save and close whatever she was working on for her and the two would argue until she’d go to sleep. The only thing Rover couldn’t do was turn themself back on, and as such Pidge usually let Rover handle turning themself off, out of respect for what they wanted. For a computer that didn’t have arms or legs or any other method of travel, Rover had a lot of autonomy.

This time, Rover opened a video file, and Lance was greeted with an image of Pidge’s face, an anxious looking smile on her face. The mouse moved over the play button, wavering only a second before clicking it.

_“Lance, if you are seeing this, well clearly that means I’m not there to stop you from touching my stuff.”_ Pidge laughed on screen, but it just sounded forced and she quickly trailed off to a sigh. _“Right now, you’re sick and in quarantine at the infirmary, so Hunk and I can’t come tell you this in person. It’s probably best if we don’t anyway. We don’t want you getting involved, especially considering everything is in the pocket of Galra. You probably won’t be able to get your hands on this anyway, but, just in case, I’ll give you a bit of a rundown of what happened._

_“Not long after you went into quarantine, I learned that the lab that my family and Shiro worked at was owned by Galra. And Hunk managed to connect Galra to the Garrison when he recognized the logo as one of the Garrison’s sponsors. So, he and I decided to try and break into the server here, see if we could find anything that could tell us how much the Garrison was involved with the Galra. But when we did, the webcams on the computers caught pictures of us, and I found us posted on the dark web with bounties on our heads._

_“Fuck, I can’t believe I was so stupid. I never should have gotten Hunk into this mess, and now we both are getting fucked over…dammit!”_ She slammed her hand down against her desk, looking utterly defeated as she took a deep breath and looked back at the camera.

_“Hunk and I are getting out of here, Lance,”_ she continued, sounding exhausted. _“As long as we are on Garrison property, we’re sitting ducks. And we can’t go home either, not when the Garrison knows where we live and will give that information right to Galra. I don’t know where we are going, but the longer we stay here, the more likely it is we’ll turn up dead. Hopefully we won’t end up dead anyway, but I don’t really have a lot of optimism right now. Don’t try to find us, okay? I think…for this, ignorance is probably more reassuring._

_“Once this video is done, Rover is probably going to ask you if you want access to any of the information I found on Galra and my family. If you decide not to get the information, just promise me you’ll at least turn on Rover occasionally. He’s pretty good company, and he deserves a little time on every now and then. Knowing you though, you’re probably going to say yes, because you can be an idiot like that at times. If you do, Rover will open the files and you can look through them all you want. Whatever you do with that information…be careful, okay? I already put Hunk in danger, and I don’t want to be responsible for you turning up dead. You guys are practically my family, and I…I don’t want to lose my family to Galra again…_

_“Well…I guess this is Katie Holt, signing off. See ya around, Lance. And…I’m sorry.”_

The video ended on Pidge’s face, looking out from the screen with sad eyes. Lance stared at the screen, almost wanting to cry as he realized this would probably be the last time she talked to him. He was probably never going to see her or Hunk ever again, because if they weren’t dead then they would probably be in hiding for a long time.

_Do you want to see what she found?_

Lance looked at Rover’s question for only a second before answering.

_Absolutely._

The mouse moved again.

* * *

Galra had their hands in so many fucking pies. They were involved in power, chemicals, technology, anything you could suggest that affected the world significantly, then Galra was involved with it. When it came to police, Galra was involved in the manufacturing and distribution of those defense bots that got destroyed whenever Keith’s group of vigilantes got involved. Galra had many politicians it paid to help support legislation it wanted. And, most egregiously of all, the Garrison.

The Garrison had numerous sponsors, but none so generous as Galra. Equipment like the simulator or the laser weapons was paid for by them, much of the scholarship students had their tuition paid by Galra, and the job offers graduating students received were positions at Galra-owned businesses.

The lab that Shiro had taken a security job at after leaving his teaching job at the Garrison was Galra-owned. Dr. Holt and Matt had already been working there for a long time, the former before Galra even purchased the lab under the table.

He memorized the information about that lab. That would be one of his stops in the future.

Pidge had been thorough as fuck, as always. Most of the incidents Lance had found that were getting no attention, she had managed to track Galra involvement in covering up. News companies paid off or bought right before journalists who were poking their noses into these incidents were fired. She showed bounties for all those significant individuals who had disappeared, from Sarah Ryner to the families of those who died at Taujeer to journalists to even herself and Hunk, the last two written in such morbid detail that Rover immediately pulled up a cat video to give Lance a break.

She had enough information here to destroy Galra if she had put it out there, and yet she hadn’t.

Then again, Ryner and those protestors and those journalists could have destroyed Galra, or at least a piece of them.

There was more, so much more, but Lance’s head began swimming with all the information he had already read and so he simply closed the windows and took a deep breath.

_I’ll look at these again later._

Rover pulled up some Vine compilations in response, and Lance welcomed the distraction.

* * *

Lance went out in his regular clothes that night, with the computer bag containing a shut down Rover slung over his shoulder. Probably best not to leave the sentient computer containing so much shit on Galra in a place that was basically Galra’s bitch at this point.

Tonight, he was not going to get involved. No ice powers, no uncomfortable mask or too-hot hoodie. The vigilantes weren’t looking for Lance after all. They were looking for some guy with ice powers and no sense of dressing appropriately for the climate of Nevada. Which was him of course, but they didn’t know that. Tonight, he was going to blow off steam and maybe do some observation if there was an attack tonight, and tomorrow he’d go back to vigilantism if necessary.

The coffee shop, as expected, was closed. That could mean nothing, but it helped that Allura’s business was not running around the same time at night Keith’s super gang was out and about.

“Lance?”

He turned to see Keith standing behind him, dressed in casual clothes instead of his uniform. Looked like he and the others weren’t out tonight then.

“Hey man, what’s up?” Lance asked, giving him a genuine smile. Yes, a night off. Perfect.

“Um…isn’t it after the Garrison’s curfew?” Keith asked, surprised. “How the hell did you get past the security system?”

“What, like it’s hard?”

Keith sighed, rolling his eyes at Lance’s smirk. “Alright then, Elle Woods. Though maybe keep an eye out on closing times if you’re going to try and get late night coffee. I’m pretty sure Starbucks is open right now though, if you’re desperate.”

“…Want to come along?” Lance offered, surprising Keith as well as himself. Oh well, it meant more time to get himself into Keith’s good graces and maybe delve into some discreet prying. At least, that was easy to justify. Dammit, was he actually starting to be friends with him?

Keith looked off to the side, a conflicted expression on his face, before shrugging. “Alright. It’s not far from here.”

* * *

“Meh…” Keith muttered after sipping his drink. “Nothing is as good as the stuff at the café.”

“Biased.” Lance would be completely inclined to agree after sipping his own drink, but Keith did work at the café and that made him the least impartial except for Allura and probably Coran. “You aren’t allowed to decide when your paycheck is on the line.”

“Allura wouldn’t…she probably wouldn’t fire me for saying if I liked Starbucks better.” The expression on Keith’s face exposed how unsure he was on that. “…Probably…”

“’Are you sure about that?’” asked Lance, doing his best John Cena impression as he did.

Keith gave him an unamused glare (that was twice in one day) in response. “That impression was terrible.”

“Bet you don’t know anyone who could do a better one,” Lance challenged, and he immediately regretted it as he saw a blaze light up in Keith’s eyes right as he pulled out his phone and messing around with it, before turning it around to show a man with rectangular glasses staring at the camera with the most annoyed expression.

“ _Seriously? Are you two actual children?_ “ he asked, raising an eyebrow at the snickering from offscreen.

A familiar voice answered, “ _Please Adam?_ ” and Lance was barely able to process that Takashi Shirogane was begging this man to do something before Adam gave a long groan and stared at the camera.

“…’ _Are you sure about that?’_ ”

Keith paused the video, and Lance looked up at him before shrugging.

“I stand corrected.”

Damn, Keith was surprisingly competitive. Considering how bored he had seemed in the Garrison simulations, which were incredibly competitive, he had thought Keith just kind of didn’t care about stuff like that. Maybe it was just that the competition at the Garrison was lacking?

Was this a thing sorta friends could talk about?

“So, who was that guy?” Lance asked instead.

“…You don’t know?” Keith looked genuinely confused. “Adam’s an instructor at the Garrison. You should have come across him at the higher levels. I left right before we would have started working with him, so you probably should have had classes with him.”

…Oh…

Lance winced. “Damn, he probably got hit by the mass lay-off.”

“…What.”

“…Last year, not long after you left, the Garrison fired a lot of employees,” he explained, rubbing his arm as he recalled Veronica calling home, completely distraught. Lots of sore topics today, huh? “Unless he got promoted or demoted to fill one of the holes, Adam probably got fired too. Somehow it didn’t end up public. I think there were NDAs that had to be signed and everything.”

Keith blinked, his eyebrows disappearing behind his hair. “How do you know about this then?”

Lance gave an exhausted sigh. “My sister. She was one of the ones they fired. Luckily her work visa meant that they couldn’t get out of paying for her airfare home, but it still really sucked that she lost her job.”

“Damn…that sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. Veronica thinks it was because she wasn’t the biggest fan of Sanda. I can’t really think of any reason they would have fired her, so she might have a point.”

Maybe it had more to do with Galra than it did with Sanda, but Lance didn’t know. He hadn’t gotten to that part of Pidge’s files if it was there, and even then, there was still a chance she hadn’t gotten to investigate that far.

Keith frowned. “That…that _really_ sucks.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed with a nod. “She got a job back home at least, but…I could talk with her, see if she might know what happened to your friend? He might have just gotten a promotion or something after all?”

“…Yeah, I’d appreciate that.”

The two got back to their drinks, the silence a bit uneasy as they both had the chance to think. Lance didn’t know what Keith was thinking about, but he personally was wondering why his sister was fired in the first place. Yeah, she hadn’t been the biggest fan of Sanda, but she was a good employee and even when her time there and his education began to overlap, she hadn’t shown him any unfair favoritism. Lance knew the Garrison was fucked up, and being in the pocket of Galra was a big deal, but exactly how corrupt was that shithole?

Well…corrupt enough to sell out two teenagers and look the other way when they disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Lance grabbed his phone and went ahead and texted Veronica.

_CheeseAndWhine: hey a friend of mine wanted to know bout 1 of ur old coworkers?_

_RonRonRonWeasley: ???_

_CheeseAndWhine: 1 of the instructors sum guy called adam?_

_RonRonRonWeasley: that’s a super common name lance_

Lance looked up at Keith, asking, “Hey, what was your friend’s last name?”

“Watson.”

_CheeseAndWhine: adam watson?_

_RonRonRonWeasley: oh you mean shirogane’s boyfriend?_

_RonRonRonWeasley: yeah I believe he was fired same time I was_

_RonRonRonWeasley: tho I think it was because he was upset about everyone just blowing off shirogane and those two scientists disappearing suddenly instead of any real beef with sanda_

_RonRonRonWeasley: can’t blame him for being pissed about it_

_CheeseAndWhine: he and shiro were together?_

_RonRonRonWeasley: well I heard from some people that they were engaged but broke it off_

_RonRonRonWeasley: so I think they were actually exes_

_CheeseAndWhine: huh_

_RonRonRonWeasley: the rumor mill was big on those two since shirogane was the best to come out of the garrison and watson was hired almost immediately after graduating and then they turned out to be gay and in a relationship_

_RonRonRonWeasley: i’m pretty sure shirogane’s little bro nearly murdered one guy for saying homophobic shit_

_RonRonRonWeasley: knowing iverson he probably would have let him if shirogane hadn’t stopped it himself_

_CheeseAndWhine: really?_

_RonRonRonWeasley: iverson is a hardass but he isn’t a homophobic dick_

_RonRonRonWeasley: at least he wasn’t_

_CheeseAndWhine: well hes a dick now_

_RonRonRonWeasley: which concerns me_

_CheeseAndWhine: thx btw_

_RonRonRonWeasley: next time please don’t text me at three am during the work week_

_CheeseAndWhine: shit sorry_

_RonRonRonWeasley: whatever now let me sleep_

Lance looked up to see Keith staring at him, expectantly.

“Veronica says he was fired,” he admitted, and Keith’s face fell. “Sorry man. You can probably figure out someway to contact him though. He might like to know you’re alive if he hasn’t seen you in a while.”

Keith grimaced, looking pained at the idea Lance raised, and so Lance dropped it, instead thinking on what his sister had told him.

If his firing had to do with Shiro’s disappearance…then Galra had to at least be somewhat involved with that. Considering how little attention the company wanted on their activities, it was probably the threat of him potentially causing uproar about it. In fact, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if that was the reason Keith was expelled too, considering how soon after that his sister and the other employees were laid off. The two of them were the most likely to cause problems because of it but weren’t big enough threats to want dead like Pidge and Hunk ended up being.

But Sanda…what did she have to do with this? It couldn’t be a coincidence that her critics ended up fired at the same time (well it could be, but the timing was just a little bit too perfect for Lance to think so). He’d have to look at what Rover had on her sometime.

“So…how the fuck did you manage to survive on a team?” Lance asked, grabbing Keith’s attention again. “Because let me tell you, staying on a team has been hell for me.”

Keith scowled. “Ugh, don’t even remind me. One of the guys was a dick and the other made us do all the work.”

Lance frowned, staring at his coffee as he scoured his memory, trying to catch the name that was just out of reach before finally snatching it up. “Griffin, right?”

“Uuuugh,” Keith groaned, as if the very mention of his name pained him. “Yes. Honestly, that guy was probably delighted when I got expelled, like the smug asshole he was.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lance admitted. Mostly because he was focused more on how much he hated Keith than any of Keith’s teammates. “I do remember he said some pretty bad shit though.”

He certainly remembered Keith straight up tackling Griffin after one of the simulator sessions after he said something, but he couldn’t remember what. He only knew it was bad because he remembered rooting for Keith to kick his ass, which never happened again.

“Yeah, he’s a complete jackass,” Keith muttered bitterly, taking an angry sip of his coffee. “James’ idea of constructive criticism was saying that I was only at the Garrison because of Shiro and that I had no parents. It’s not like I would ever say to his face that the only reason anyone liked him was because he was middle-school attractive.”

“Because you’re not a dick,” Lance pointed out, only briefly surprised at how easily he was able to admit that now. Because when he really thought about it, the only slightly dick-ish thing Keith ever did was get into fights.

“Yes, thank you.” Keith glared at the table. “Honestly, the Garrison was the first place I ever went where I wasn’t constantly being compared to that asshole. In middle school it was always ‘James is well-behaved’ and ‘James is smart’ and ‘James is destined for greatness’, while I was the fuck-up who everyone assumed was going to end up in jail. Then we got to the Garrison and it stopped, not that he ever cared.”

“Well, isn’t that ironic.”

Lance’s mouth snapped shut as he immediately realized what he just said, and he avoided eye contact with Keith as he tried to figure out what to say.

“What do you mean?”

With a grimace, Lance finally managed to get out, “It was you who everyone was compared to at the Garrison. You were the person who everyone was told to be like.”

Keith’s face went slack. “…Seriously?”

He nodded, and the bitterness he had been dealing with since he was first told he wouldn’t be good enough crawled up his throat, demanding attention after days of pushing it down to focus on his mission. Resentment didn’t go away that easily.

“Yeah. You were the heir to Shiro’s title of golden boy and everything,” Lance admitted, and the bitterness began to spill out, dripping out like water until he was almost choking on it. “It wasn’t fun.”

“…Shit.”

“Did you seriously not notice?”

“No,” Keith admitted, frowning. “It was more of a…I just…I just wanted to prove that I could do it. I didn’t want to be…ugh. I feel like a jerk now.”

Lance sighed. “Well surprisingly, you managed to still be a decent person because of that. So, congrats, you are officially better than Griffin.”

“Not that it ended up being worth a shit.”

Here Lance was, sitting with the former top of his class, who was now expelled and stranded in Warden with no family, working in food service and living in a shack in the desert. He didn’t really know how it felt, to have everything you worked for lost in a second, to wonder if the people who looked down on you now felt as if they were proven right about you all along. It had never even occurred to him in his hatred and jealousy how awful it must have been for Keith to get thrown out.

And now he spent his nights as a vigilante, going after the company that took his foster brother from him, and Lance wondered if Keith even had anything else in this city.

Finally, after a minute of wondering and regretting, he spoke.

“Can I have your phone number?”

Keith blinked, tilting his head in confusion. “What?”

“Look…I want to be friends, if that is possible?”

Lance didn’t really know if it was because Keith was lonely, or if he was lonely, or if it was because he was just hit by how he was never going to see his only two Garrison friends again and that this guy only had his weird vigilante group and Allura in this city and who knew what kind of relationship he had with them, but he decided that being friends with Keith wouldn’t be the end of the world and he’d rather have a guy who was part of a secret organization going after one of the Garrison’s patrons out a desire for revenge/justice/??? than no one at all.

Every part of him felt exposed as Keith looked over him appraisingly, as if he was making note of every single flaw and deception. Lance kept himself as composed as possible as Keith glanced briefly at the computer bag, but his gaze didn’t linger and finally he looked at Lance again.

“…Okay.”

It was quick, the two of them switching phones briefly to add each other in their contacts, and Lance couldn’t help but take a brief glance at the other contacts Keith had, not long enough to notice any weird ones, before putting in his own number and his name.

(Keith only had five contacts before Lance added his, including Allura, Coran, and Takashi, the last one easily attributed to his missing foster brother. The other two weren’t recognizable, but they were probably Keith’s foster parents and so Lance decided that Keith probably had a burner phone or some other way to contact his fellow vigilantes.)

As they traded back phones, Keith noted, “Cool lock screen.”

Lance frowned, glancing at it only to be faced with colorful artwork of Stevonnie. “Oh, thanks. Are you a fan too?”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty behind.”

“Wait until you watch A Single Pale Rose. It changes everything.”

“Shut up, don’t spoil anything!”

“I’m not spoiling anything, I’m just saying it’s completely- “

“Shut up!”

The two sat there for a while, talking and telling jokes and lightly teasing each other, and Lance decided he had made the right choice.

He was going to be friends with Keith, as crazy as that seemed. And, more than just that, he wasn’t going to give up on his search.

He’d figure out what happened to Shiro and Matt and Dr. Holt and Pidge and Hunk and everyone else who had ended up caught up in Galra’s bullshit. He was going to make sure that all the people that had been hurt got justice at the very least.

When he and Keith eventually parted and Lance snuck back into his room, he headed into the bathroom and opened Rover up, turning them on and logging in.

_Lance?_

“Hey buddy,” Lance said aloud, before typing his proper response into the chat client.

_I think I’m going to take down Galra._

_At the very least, I’m going to try._

There was a pause for a moment, before a message appeared on the screen, causing Lance to smile brightly in response.

_Let’s get started then._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the first of all the chapters that wasn't completed already and only needed some editing. It was partially done when I was posting the others, and my intention had been to post Chapter 5 when I was finished with it, but in the end I chose to post Chapter 5 before finishing. This is the chapter that starts bringing in a bit more of information that we got from later seasons, specifically involving a bit more with Lance's family and Adam. Also, Pidge gets some dialogue here! Miraculous!
> 
> I got a comment before that had the reader say they thought that Lance, Hunk, and Pidge weren't as close in this story. That isn't really the case, to be honest. I wrote this with them being closer, to be honest. The three of them have known each other and grown to trust each other for a longer period of time in this universe, and Pidge eventually opened up to them about her real identity and her investigation (which Hunk already knew a bit about, since he definitely read her diary in this universe too). 
> 
> And the implementation of Rover was also planned to be this way, since I wanted Rover to play a big part and also give a little insight into how Pidge's powers worked.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is [boopboopitydoop](https://boopboopitydoop.tumblr.com). Shoot me a message if you want to scream about Season 7 and at me for not even really updating the first five chapter to account for new information. Sorry!


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